Belt



M. 1. SMITH.

BELT.

APPLICATION FILED MAR. 18, 1919.

13356390, Patented Oct. 26,1920.

PATENT MANNING J. SMITH, or PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA.

BELT.

Specification of Letters Patent.

Patented Oct. 26, 1920.

Application filed March 18, 1919. Serial No. 283,424.

To all whom it may concern:

Be it known that I, MANNING J. SMITH, a citizen of the United States, residing at Philadelphia, county of Philadelphia, and State of Pennsylvania, have invented a new and useful Improvement in Belts, of which the following is a full, clear, and exact description, reference being had to the accompanying drawings, which form a part of this specification.

The object of, my invention is to provide a belt composed of a woven fabric in which one or both longitudinal edges are not closed, as by a selvedge, in the weaving operation, and in which such edges arefinished so as to prevent unraveling and increase the resistance to wear and tear. While the invention is applicable to any belt which is woven of relatively great width and severed longitudinally into strips forming the individual belts, it is more especially applicable to belts which are woven in the form of a tube and then cut into sections to form individual endless belts.

Heretofore, in making belts from tubular woven fabric, it has been the practice to cut the belt into sections each having a width that is a multiple of the desired width of the finished belt, and then to fold the section longitudinally to form a belt of several plies, the raw edges of the fabric being folded in and the whole being stitched to prevent unraveling. Belts of this character lack flexibility, and especially-when running on. small pulleys, are found to pucker and break. At the same time the folded edges of the fabric are rapidly worn out by contact with the pulley flanges and the belt tends to unravel.

Belts have heretofore been made from tubular fabrics in single ply, the edges being stitched longitudinally or overstitched. It is found,however, that the stitching reduces the flexibility and the frictional contact with the pulley flanges cuts the stitches, which unravel and permit the fabric of the belt to unravel, rendering it useless. V

In accordance with my invention, a belt may be initially cut to the desired width from a tubular fabric that is woven the desired weight and thickness, so that the finished belt will be single ply and when finished will have no tendency to unravel at the edges and will oifer a maximum resistance to wear. TlllS belt is found to be stronger than the folded belt and has all the advantages of flexibility,impossible to obtain in a folded and stitched belt. The wear due to frictional contact with the pulley flanges is reduced to a minimum and can not cause the unraveling of the fabric of the belt. I shall describe my invention in connection with the accompanying drawings, which illustrate a preferred embodiment of my invention, and in which Figure 1 is a plan View of a section of tubular woven fabric.

F g. 2 is an end elevation of Fig. 1.

F g. 3 is a view of a finished belt.

Fig. 4: is a cross-section along line 44 of Fig. 3.

F 5 is a plan view of a section of belt.

Flg. 6 is an enlarged diagrammatic view of a section of belt.

The belts a are cut of any desired width from a section of tubular woven fabric 6 across the line of the warp, as shown in Fig. 1 at c, 0, thus providing an endless belt. The warp threads 65 having been cut, the edges 6 of the belt are composed of the loose ends of the warp, and the weft threads f tend to unravel. The edges are filled or impregnated with'rubber g by dipping, or othermeans, and the edges vulcanized. I In practice, the rubber grips the ends of the warp and the weft and ties in the latter preventing the belt from unraveling at the same time giving greatly increased wearing quallties to the edges, without in any way lessening the flexibility of the belt.

Having now fully described my invention, what I claimand desire to protect by Letters Patent is: I

1. A belt comprising a section of woven fabric, having longitudinally extending threads and a plurality of relatively short cross threads having loose ends and means adhesively securing to the adjacent longitudinal threads the loose ends of said cross threads.

2. A belt having a broad longitudinally extending central. section composed excluorFieE.

sively of interwoven longitudinal and cross pregnating the spaces between the end longitudinal threads and the extremities of the cross threads, thereby reinforcing the edges, without affecting the flexibility of the belt 5 and preventing unraveling 3. A belt having endless weft threads interwoven with warp threads having free.

ends and an adhesive material penetrating the fabriefrom each edge thereofacross a relatively small part of its width.

In testimony of which invention, I have hereunto set my hand, at Philadelphia, Pa, on this 17th dayof March, 1919.

' MANNING J. SMITH. 

